Cricket Rolls Dice On 4G In Las Vegas

Leap Wireless International launched Las Vegas as its second 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) city, promising more to come in 2012.

The pay-as-you-go, low-cost operator--otherwise known as Cricket--says that the 4G deployment, announced Wednesday, covers 80% of the Las Vegas area. It is claiming that the service will offer data speeds three to 15 times faster than its 3G service.

"We expect to launch LTE service in additional Cricket markets in 2012 and cover approximately 21 million covered POPs by the end of the year," says Doug Hutcheson, president and CEO of Leap, in a statement. "In addition, we expect to introduce several high-quality LTE smartphones before the end of the year that will be attractive to our value conscious customers."